New Normal
by sprygirl
Summary: A tiny moment after 3 x13, Jemma and Fitz after the Spy's Goodbye, Jemma having trouble adjusting to her own restart.
She made it three-quarters of the block beyond the bar before she gave up and cried. The shot felt warm and languid in her chest and fingertips, and now whatever anger she'd been feeling at the wrongness of losing Bobbi and Lance was melted into grief.

She felt him at her shaking shoulder, and heard him say: "Whoever thought _that_ was a good idea?" Fitz. Trying to make her laugh.

She turned and raised her chin to roll her eyes at him, but his face brought back the tears. His hands came out of his pockets, then, "Come here," -she was in his arms. "It's alright, Jem," he said. "'It's ok." She pressed her face into his collar and hung on.

Through his jacket she felt the solidness of him, the new width of his chest. And still though: there was old familiar of his thumb stroking of its own accord on her back. He'd always been tactile, Fitz. Some rebellious part of her brain sat upright, tossing grief away over its shoulder and flipping its hair in interest, and she rolled her eyes at herself. _Down girl_. Still, she didn't let go, and indulged in a few inhalations at his neck so she felt more than heard his next words. "It's alright...it's alright….I have other jackets."

She could feel him grinning - _thankyouandgoodnight-_ Bastard. His timing, God. Even when he was 16, and "achingly shy", he'd had it-she remembered him skewering a condescending TA with a dead-on imitation muttered just low enough for only her to hear. When she'd snort-laughed, trying to keep quiet, she'd seen him smile for the first time, and she remembered thinking, "I have a friend!"-which felt ridiculous except that was the exact same thing his face was saying.

She snuffled and let go. He pretend-brushed his lapel and shoulder and punched his arm for it. Let him bump her shoulder with his as they walked on to the intersection to hail a cab. As she watched him lean into the window to negotiate the directions, she swiped hastily under her eyes to mitigate the mascara disaster likely there. _There was a time,_ some part of her griped, _that you didn't worry about looking good around Fitz_. A time when he was all cardigans and a slightly bent wrist at his hip that meant nothing about sex.

Magnetic still, though. To her. Jemma remembered right that she'd followed him around those first years in school. Back then she'd been too intimidated by him to speculate about his life of the body. She realized somewhere in there she'd formed the vague notion that he might be gay – (and therefore more sophisticated/better than her- as usual). In her imaginings there was a beautiful boyfriend, maybe, who…

Well, Jemma's ability back then to fantasize about her own sex life was limited, and so she rarely got very far when she imagined Fitz and his (imaginary, maybe Brazilian) boyfriend. And anyway, some combination of his great intelligence and his often furrowed brow disinvited further speculation, and so, before they'd begun a relationship at all really, the boundaries and walls had been set very firmly. It was all very clear.

Not so much anymore. Jemma watched Fitz jab the touchscreen on the taxi TV - "Really?" He was muttering, Scottishly. The TV continued to brightly tell them about spa services downtown, about waxing for the upcoming summer and when you'd want to go "completely bare" - Jemma leaned across and touched it off.

"Thanks. Though I was beginning to be sold on some summer depilitation…"

"Your hands are too cold," she said. "They're not working on the touchpad."

He looked at his hands in the blue light of the bank sign they were stopped next to. He put them together and applied his knuckles to his mouth, huffed a breath on them.

The light changed. Jemma watched the gold prickles on his cheek fade to shadow as the cab carried them through the intersection. Her heart splashed deep in blood and ache and love.

She reached out and took his clasped hands in her own. Brought them to her mouth and blew on them. Saw his eyes, round and trusting, watch her for a second too long. Some inside part of her cheered. She pressed his hands to her chest and held on to them as the cab hurtled through the night to a future they did not know.


End file.
